Saturday, 29 September 2012

“Many people have spiritual encounters, but without a biblical foundation, they don’t always find their way to Christ,” Robinson says.

This is certainly not a fresh story but for those who choose to believe, such will always find it as fresh as split seconds ago event. The question remains; how many of us believe in the true existence of Heaven? I only thought to share this with readers who probably haven't bumped on this story before.

According to http://jesus-loves-you.org/?p=3246, Mickey Robinson lived a wild, thrill seeking life, never experiencing the thrill of knowing Jesus Christ. One day everything changed when he was involved in a horrific plane crash. While laying on the hospital table, Mickey died and his soul left his body. Listen and watch Mickey’s story of looking down into the blackness of Hell before being granted entrance into Paradiseusing the above link. After his soul was returned to his body, Mickey woke, and has never been the same!

http://hopeheals.org/2011/08/19/charisma-magazine/. On August 15, 1968, Robinson was in the front seat of a Piper Cherokee airplane, destined for a routine jump. Lulled to sleep by the buzzing vibrations of the engine during takeoff, he suddenly was roused by an eerie hush barley 150 feet into the climb.

Engine failure.

Trying to keep the plane airborne, the pilot pulled back on the yoke, but the airplane stalled, pitching the nose toward the earth.

“That’s it, we’re going down,” pronounced the pilot, as the hopeless craft plummeted six terrified men into a disastrous dive. Seconds later, the airplane crashed into a giant oak tree, spinning wing-over-wing as it was hurled to the ground.

The other four skydivers escaped the wreckage, but Robinson and the pilot were trapped in the front seat. Fire erupted, and seconds before the airplane exploded, Robinson was pulled out, injured and flaming, by one of his fellow skydivers.

“He pulled so hard, he pulled his thumbs out of their sockets,” Robinson recalls. The trapped pilot was unable to be rescued in time.

Suffering a brain injury and severe burns over 35 percent of his body, Robinson was rushed to nearby South­west Community Hospital in Berea, Ohio. It was a small facility, but the young man was not expected to live, and he would certainly not survive an airlift, doctors determined.

In the weeks following, Robinson hung on, but his condition worsened. The fire had literally peeled the skin off of half his face, destroying his right eye. He was bleeding profusely and about to lose his right arm to amputation, while the nerves in both of his legs died, leaving him paralyzed as well.

Serious infection set in, and he suffered from painful ulcers that bore holes through his esophagus and from bedsores so severe his bones protruded. His nerves were so traumatized he alternated between a comatose and a “hyperconscious” state, he says.

“The pain was out of this world,” Robinson describes. “If someone walked by [his bed] and even brushed the sheet, it felt like someone had hit my entire nervous system with a sledge hammer.”

Despite all his agony, Robinson never thought he would die-until about a month after the accident. Although he was in a coma, he overheard a doctor and nurse discussing his impending death. Inside his soul he uttered a silent scream: No! I’m not going to die!

That day, as if on cue, the hospital room suddenly faded away, and Robinson says he felt like he was being transported out of his body and into a spiritual plane—the “real world,” he calls it. Instantly, he lost all awareness of time and gained a profound sense of eternity.

“[In the spiritual world], the colors are brighter, the thoughts are more intense, the feelings have greater depth,” he says.

In the distance he saw an inviting white light, which he yearned to reach, but a blackness suddenly began closing in around him, he says. The more he was swallowed by darkness, the smaller the light became, until it was as thin as the slit of a closing eye. He was terrified, knowing if the light would disappear, he would be forever banished.

“It was eternal, empty, nothingness forever,” he says soberly, as if it happened yesterday. “It’s the most horrible, hope­less feeling.”

He describes it as being filled with every passion and desire known with no chance of ever fulfilling any of it.

“What a torment, what a remorse … knowing that it could have been different, but you turned down the chance,” he says.

Desperate, Robinson began scream­ing for God to give him another chance. Then, instantly, he was standing in the very presence of God in heaven, he says. He does not claim to have seen the face of God but rather to have been saved by His mercy and bathed in His glory, which he describes as liquid gold radi­ating through Him in every direction, holding everything together.

“It had in it all of God’s love, all of His authority, all of His wisdom, comfort and strength,” he says with a gleam in his eye. “It’s the most blissful, enjoyable experience you can have.”

So pleasurable, in fact, that Robinson gets annoyed when people joke about going fishing or golfing in heaven.

“Hey, you’re gonna want to hang around God!” he retorts.

People also commonly joke about watching their lives on a giant TV screen in heaven, and Robinson had a similar experience, but he says God showed him only events and people he would encounter in his future.

Suddenly, Robinson’s renewed spirit was drawn back into his mutilated body, and he literally came back uttering an unknown language, he says, though he had never heard of speaking in tongues. He doesn’t know if he was medically dead during his experience, but when he awoke, his 106-degree fever instantly broke.

Beaming with inner peace, he opened his eyes to see the worried faces of doctors and nurses hovering around him, and all he could think was, Hey, why is everybody so uptight? he recalls today with a laugh.

Because Robinson was not a Chris­tian before his accident, he is often asked why God allowed him a second chance.

“I repented while I was still alive,” he says, con­vinced that God heard his every desperate cry, from the time of the accident and beyond. “God gave me a thin space of repentance.”

That event marked the beginning of Robinson’s recovery and eventual call into ministry, although many years would pass before it would all come together.

Through 167 days in the hospital and four more years in a Cleveland rehabili­tation center, Robinson endured more than 50 surgeries as doctors tried to put his body back together. The first time they stood him up in physical therapy, he passed out and slept for 24 hours, he says.

He was tube-fed for a year while doctors repaired his esophagus. They reconstructed his face, ear and right hand.

He has vivid memories of many painful procedures-some exper­imental-but modern medicine could do only so much.

Armed with hope for his future, Robinson pressed on for more. Although he didn’t understand the healing power of God, for almost a year he commanded his paralyzed legs to work.

Over time, one leg gradually began to respond to electrical nerve stimulation, but the other did not. A year later, however, in a split second, that leg was fully restored, with no medical expla­nation. Today Robinson walks, runs and even skis.

“Nerves can improve, but none of them allow that kind of instan­taneous recovery,” says neurolo­gist and rehabilitation specialist Buddy Nichols of Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Nichols, who consistently used elec­trical nerve stimulation on patients during his 33 years of practice, says he has never seen a sudden restoration like Robinson’s. He says the process would be “long, slow and incomplete” for a case like his in which underlying nerve fibers would have to respond to therapy.

Although he’s not Robinson’s per­sonal physician, Nichols says he has examined him “from a distance, with a doctor’s trained eye” when Robinson has ministered at his church on numerous occasions.

“There’s nothing to hypothesize about. What Mickey’s describing with these nerves is so out of the realm of possibility, based on medical knowledge, that I would not hesitate, over­whelmingly, to use the term ‘miracle,’” Nichols says.

Robinson testifies that another miracle occurred when doctors performed a second corneal transplant on his burned eye, purely for cosmetic reasons. Seven days later they were stunned to find that he had regained normal vision in that eye.

Making Sense of It All

Even after his “return from heaven,” Robinson had no biblical understanding of God or his purpose for life. He knew what to expect after death, but he didn’t know how to live on earth.

Numerous spiritual encounters deep­ened his quest to discover his destiny. Once, as a man read the Bible to him in the hospital, Robinson’s entire body began to shake violently in his bed. Confounded, he shouted, “I’ve got to be some kind of priest or something!”

During the next seven years, Robinson studied world religions, trying to make sense of his experi­ences. The scenes of his future life, shown to him in heaven, remarkably began to unfold during this period.

People from those scenes began to enter his life, including a young woman named Barbara, whom he married in 1973. The couple now have four children, ages 17 to 24.

Despite his dramatic experiences, however, it was the Word of God that finally brought meaning to Robinson’s life. Eventually, as he gained understanding of the Scrip­tures through the personal influ­ence of musician Phil Keaggy and others, he joined a church where he was finally discipled.

“Many people have spiritual encounters, but without a biblical foundation, they don’t always find their way to Christ,” Robinson says.

Soon, he was invited to share his testimony in Full Gospel Busi­ness Men’s meetings. He eventually was asked to join the leadership team of The Church on Elm Street in Butler, Ohio, (now River of Life Church) and the Ohio Prophetic Conference.

“We just sensed leadership ability and the call of God on his life,” says Larry Lotz, who was the co-pastor of The Church on Elm Street at the time.

Today, part of the Robinsons’ calling is to teach expressive worship through Bar­bara’s ministry, Treasure Wind. Quoting Romans 12:1 from the Amplified Bible, Barbara says her passion is helping people to have a “decisive dedication of [their] bodies … to God.”

“It’s prophetic worship,” she says. “It’s a language, like using parables. Some­times the Word of the Lord will come forth from [expressive] movement.”

Ramona Rickard, co-­pastor of Church of the Resurrection in Min­neapolis, says Barbara’s role greatly enhances Mickey’s ministry.

“Barbara is a wonderful woman of grace. She gets everyone involved-the old and the young, and people of all abilities,” she says.

The Robinsons currently devote much time to regions where community net­working is ushering in a new unity and a fresh move of God, particularly around Minneapolis; Rochester Hills, Michigan; and Sacramento, California. Mickey relationship-builder. He provides apos­tolic guidance to churches nationwide, including New River Fellowship, a church In Franklin, Tennessee, co-pastored by musician Michael W. Smith.

“He’s very affirming to ministers and ministries,” says DonFinto, a former pastor of Nashville’s Belmont Church, who played an important role in the Robinsons’ move from Mississippi to Nashville, Tennessee, in 1998. “Mickey is a teacher, a lover of people and has a strong prophetic influence.”

But Nashville is only one small part of the Robinsons’ “relational web,” as they call it. And if “relational” is the buzz­word, then Mickey is a bee, cross-polli­nating the move of God to everyone he meets. To know Robinson is to be his friend, because his warm personality makes him approachable to everyone.

“He’s kind of like a Tinkertoy,” says Ramona Rickard. “He just connects people.”

Looking back, Robinson doesn’t blame God for the pain he has suffered. Rather, he is grateful for God’s mercy in a world filled with danger and spiritual forces. He cautions people not to question God amid trials that tempt them to withdraw from His comfort or His purposes.

“Oftentimes you are the most pliable when you are in the fire of God,” he says. “Even Jesus learned obedience from the things He suffered.”

Robinson says he wants his legacy to be like that of the early apostles who “turned the world upside down.” Although he’s known as a loving, powerful man of God, he believes his real testimony is about his weakness and God’s strength.

“People don’t realize how desperate their lives really are,” he says. “I’m just desperate for God now as I was when I was lying in the hospital.”

Perhaps it is such desperation that keeps this wounded warrior in his place of glory. The glory of God, that is.